The Great Concert of the Night

DECEMBER

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations iii 11: Make for thyself a definition or description of the thing which is presented to thee, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell thyself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved. For nothing is so productive of elevation of the mind as to be able to examine methodically and truly every object which is presented to thee in life, and always to look at things so as to see at the same time what kind of universe this is, and what kind of use everything performs in it, and what value everything has with reference to the whole.

Looking into a mirror, I see a face that is scrutinising the scrutinising face, and reacting to being scrutinised. Confronting oneself, one begins to play the part of the examiner, the judge.

To love truly, wrote Simone Weil, is to consent to the distance that separates us from the object of our love. Attention, as she uses the word, is a receptivity in which one’s self is suspended; it is open and passive, not active and focused. What people mean by ‘love’ is usually appropriation, sometimes camouflaged with tenderness, but sometimes barely camouflaged at all, as Imogen said. The life that I sometimes allowed myself to imagine, a life shared for many years with Imogen, was not a life that she could have lived.

Sight is the only sense that responds to the assertion of the will; we impose our will on what we see. But at the maison de maître it was necessary to suspend the will: I possessed Imogen only in so far as my eyes received the sight of her.

Val writes of a conversation with a woman – not a client, she is at pains to point out – whose ‘every waking moment’ is consumed by her resentment of her ex-husband, a man from whom she separated more than ten years ago. This man treated her abominably. Of this there is no doubt, we are told. He was a philanderer. His business, unspecified, brought him into regular contact with alluring young women, a temptation to which he all too willingly surrendered. Since the divorce his career has taken a steeper upward trajectory. Every year there’s a new car; his girlfriend is startling. It is all so unfair. Val’s acquaintance, the wronged woman, revisits every day the crimes this man committed against her. She replenishes her grievances. The woman is in the right, but there can be no resolution if she continues this way. She must, says Val, ‘let it go’, even if this means living with the acceptance that the wrongdoer has, in a sense, won. Anger is a ‘barrier against the present’. Sometimes one must forget, if not forgive. George Santayana is quoted: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ But Santayana was wrong, Val proposes. Recollection of past injustices rarely helps to bring about reconciliation. Our culture is obsessed with commemoration, with demands for apology for events that occurred many lifetimes ago. Perhaps it is best not to reopen old wounds. Forgetting is good for us; indeed, it is essential to our well-being, ‘just like sleep’.

I pause Le Grand Concert de la Nuit at a sequence that always moves me: Agamédé and the twin maidservants, the deaf girls. It appears that she has instructed these children in a private language of gestures. She converses with them by means of flurrying fingers, complex arabesques of the hand, quick caresses of her own face and arms. Agamédé sweeps a finger around the palm of each of the girls, as though playing notes on a glass harmonica, and the girls smile at whatever favour it is that their mistress has promised. From this intimate choreography, we know that the unfathomable Agamédé, the cold and subtle Agamédé, loves these children as she loves no one else.

The Count, walking past the belvedere with Agamédé, makes an observation. We do not hear his words, but the expression is sardonic; we assume that the subject of the remark is the pensive young Guignon, who has just crossed the path on which the Count and Agamédé are strolling. Agamédé laughs. At this moment, in the background, in the belvedere, the nervous-looking theorbo player, who is evidently a real musician and not an actor, directs a brief but longing look at the poised and pretty flautist, who seems to be aware of his attention, though her gaze does not stray from the score on the stand in front of her. This moment is accidental, I’m sure; but it has been allowed to remain because it could be seen to serve the purposes of the film. I find it touching, this glimpse of the truly real amid all the high artifice.

I freeze the scene at the instant in which the flautist, at the end of a long phrase, lifts her lips from the flute for a fraction of a second; a small smile appears, in response to the admiring gaze, I believe. In that frame, Agamédé’s laugh is reaching fruition, but if one looks at that frame alone, her face is not laughing: if one were to see this image in isolation, the expression might be read as one of pain. Freeze the action a moment later, and one now sees weariness in Agamédé’s face. But twenty-four frames flash onto the retina in each second of the film, and in watching this tiny episode one sees not a succession of photographic images but a single event – an outburst of gaiety. By means of the phi phenomenon and beta movement, our brain converts the sequence of unmoving images into a perfect illusion of motion. We see the movement of life. Agamédé glances to her left; touching the tip of her tongue to her teeth, she laughs, and in the same instant the theorbo player glances at the attractive young flautist. That sentence might be said to consist of thirty frames. In description, the scene becomes a bodiless tableau; there is no illusion of movement; no illusion of anything.

An announcement: the Sanderson-Perceval Museum will close to the public on March 31st next year. A hotel group has expressed an interest in acquiring the building. There are no immediate plans to auction any more items from the collection. I am authorised to put in place as many loan arrangements as possible; unloaned items are to be stored, for an indefinite period.

In the last hour of full sunlight we came upon a tiny bay. The tide had turned an hour ago: a thin curve of sea-smoothed sand, dark with water, was now exposed; small pools shone in the low-lying rocks. A narrow path descended steeply through the grass, bringing us to the back of the inlet. There we sat. The sun was in our faces, a disc of gorgeous tangerine, within a shallow bank of cloud that ran across the whole visible horizon, a wall of violet and mauve. The higher sky, above the mauve, was palest lemon. A windless evening. We heard only the rushing of the little waves; the sighing of the sea. ‘My God,’ Imogen whispered, staring across the water. The pleasure was inexpressible, but it compelled acknowledgement, an exclamation. And in the moment of that exclamation it waned a little, necessarily, having been acknowledged; by no act of will could the pleasure now be recovered completely. I recall her face before she spoke: the widened eyes, momentarily ingenuous; the slight parting of the lips; she combed her hair with her fingers. In one of the rock pools, a blenny swam among the beadlet anemones. She watched it, fascinated.

The plausible atmospherics of the little bay. Some of those words may have led me astray. Was the sky ‘violet and mauve’? Perhaps it was; it should have been. The colours seem right; the colour-names, rather. The scene cannot be seen; the mind’s eye is not an eye. In bringing the past closer, into words, a distance is created. In writing, one steps outside of life.

We watched a pair of jays foraging in the oak trees. It would have been one of the last times we walked to within sight of the copse. The birds delighted her – their agility, the gorgeous colouring. Everything delighted her that afternoon. Her thoughts were like the birds, she remarked. Perhaps, she said, what was happening in her mind could not be characterised as thought. Impressions and notions alighted weightlessly and quickly departed. Everything that she saw was of interest, but her interest was disinterested, she told me.

Interview not a success. By the time I arrived, I knew that I could not live in London again. At the Tube station, I found myself acting the part of the bewildered provincial; I actually flinched at the noise of the approaching train. My self-presentation lacked conviction.

Having a couple of hours to spare, I retreated to the National Gallery, and went directly to Tiepolo’s melancholy Venus, as if expected there. Whenever Imogen was in the vicinity, she would pay her a visit, to see that lovely face and the otherworldly pink of the fabric that spills from her cloud-throne. She brought me to look at her, the first time I stayed at Imogen’s flat. This Venus directs her gaze at Time. Other Venuses regard their own reflection, or Mars, or Adonis, or merely avert their eyes from their beholders. The multitudinous Virgins, however, live among us. Even here, in exile, among people for whom she is merely an image, the Virgin looks at us, or down on us, returning our gaze. Whereas Venus looks away, at the object of her passion, or at nobody at all.

An altercation in the Velázquez room: a guard steps in front of a dozen teenagers who have run into the room as if the place were a playground. ‘God, what’s her problem?’ shouts the queen bee, departing at the head of the gang. Later, I meet them again. The queen bee has paused to take a picture of herself, in front of a painting which she has been told is really famous. She grins as though the painted face were the face of a celebrity. Nearby, a teacher is talking to a school group. Half of her audience are looking at their phones.

‘But every time you do something it’s the last time you’ll ever do it,’ Imogen remarked. We had walked to the village; it would not be the last time we walked that far – not quite. ‘This afternoon is never going to happen again, the same as every afternoon,’ she said, serenely. That evening, however, she was distraught.

I am drinking more than I used to, and more than I should. I read and I drink. I watch films and I drink. I drink as I try to write. Grammar and syntax help to keep me in order. Charles Perceval’s laudanum is something I would like to try. It gave him wonderful visions: the garden became a lake of viscous liquid, emerald green; he roamed across glaciers that were the colour of amber and yielded to the pressure of his feet; impossible animals, monstrous yet benign, fed from his hand; voices spoke from the leaves of trees.

In a letter to Adeline, Charles Perceval quotes admiringly the writings of Thomas Sydenham (1624–89), the ‘English Hippocrates’: ‘The physician who earnestly studies – with his own eyes – and not through the medium of books – the natural phenomena of the different diseases, must naturally excel in the art of discovering what, in any given case, are the true indications as to the remedial measures that should be employed.’ Writing in his journal after Adeline’s death, Charles Perceval cites Sydenham again: ‘Of all the remedies it has pleased almighty God to give man to relieve his suffering, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.’ And, five years before Charles’s death, another line from Sydenham: ‘The arrival of a good clown exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than of twenty asses laden with drugs.’

I have found certain materials and instruments conducive to this ritual: ivory high-grade vellum paper, manufactured in France, unlined, of optimal smoothness, absorbency and opacity; my grandfather’s pen; Italian ink, profoundly black. The words are produced more easily this way; perhaps too easily, sometimes. There is an element of fetishism at work here, one could say: the French paper; the antique pen; the Italian ink, in its elegantly functional bottle. That would be Emma’s analysis: fetishism and a wilfully eccentric devotion to antiquated technologies, akin to our father’s loyalty to vinyl records and his unreliable old watch. A mechanical watch is an absurdity nowadays, Emma insists, though she can appreciate that the elegant sweep of a mechanical second hand is more pleasing to the eye than the stuttering of a quartz-regulated item. Nonetheless, why squander money on something that tells the time less competently than a battery-powered watch that costs a fraction of the price? We discussed the subject in her kitchen, amid an array of high-end culinary equipment and appliances. The point, I tried to explain, was that the mechanism of the flatteringly costly watch had been manufactured and assembled with great care and precision, to impose a structure on the flux of reality. The divisions of the day are a human creation, and it is fitting that they should be measured by a hand-made mechanism, a compact and complex machine that functions by means of the precise interaction of extraordinarily delicate cogs and levers and springs, rather than relying on the mere quivering of a crystal. ‘But the fact is,’ Emma answered, ‘mine is more accurate than yours. And that’s what a watch is for.’ But she was impressed by what the gift represented. ‘She really must think a lot of you,’ she remarked, on first seeing it; as I recall, there was some amazement in her voice.

The sense of sight – the insatiable philanderer of the senses.

Maston House, flagship hotel of the group that intends to create the Perceval House Hotel, offers ‘the perfect balance of authentic Georgian style and contemporary living’. In each of its rooms and suites, ‘classic antique pieces and stunning period features’ are found alongside examples of ‘superlative modern design’. Discreet luxury is the keynote. In the Ridotto Bar of Maston House guests can relax with a bottle selected from the hotel’s ‘world-class’ cellar of French, Italian and New World vintages, or a glass from the vast menu of spirits. The Ridotto Bar offers whiskies such as the Springbank 30 Year Old 1965 and the John Walker, of which a mere 330 bottles have been produced. ‘Crafted from specially selected casks to create a whisky as close to the nineteenth-century style as possible’, the John Walker represents ‘the epitome of exclusivity’. The mirrored room will be rebranded as the Silver Lounge.

Today’s attendance: thirty-seven. ‘Pricy for what you get, but a shame it’s closing down,’ someone writes in the visitor’s book. ‘Loved the gross stuff,’ writes another. A quick calculation: a single bottle of the John Walker costs four hundred times the admission charge for the Sanderson-Perceval museum. Retail price, not bar price.

On the night before he was due to undergo the amputation of his cancerous leg, Peregrino Laziosi, the future Saint Peregrine, wonder-worker and patron saint of those afflicted with cancer, experienced a vision of the crucified Christ, who came down from the cross to touch the diseased limb. The following day, the surgeon could find no trace of any tumour. There have been many cases of apparently spontaneous recovery from cancer. In New York, in the 1880s, a man by the name of Fred Stein endured several operations to remove a sarcoma from his neck. The operations failed, but when Stein developed erysipelas, a bacterial skin infection that produces a severe fever, the tumour disappeared. Stein was interviewed by a doctor named William Bradley Coley, who reasoned that the sarcoma had been destroyed by the patient’s over-stimulated immune system. Coley went on to treat successfully a number of tumours using a mixture of bacterial toxins. Recently, researchers have examined cases in which acute myeloid leukaemia has apparently regressed of its own accord, and have found that the great majority of the patients in question had suffered from pneumonia or some other serious illness prior to the regression. Diphtheria, syphilis, gonorrhoea, hepatitis, malaria, influenza, measles and smallpox have all been associated with the sudden disappearance of tumours.

A fever was recorded in the case of Dinah Morley, who was examined by Cornelius Perceval in the spring of 1818. She presented with a goitre, for which the doctor may well have prescribed ‘blue pill’. Many of Perceval’s contemporaries prescribed this toxic compound for a variety of illnesses and disorders, a practice decried as ‘quackery’ by one Erasmus Schütz, to whom Dinah Morley took her goitre when it became apparent that it was not responding to Cornelius Perceval’s treatment. Schütz was an acolyte of Samuel Hahnemann, the creator of homeopathy, and was thus, in the eyes of Perceval, an arrant charlatan. Mrs Morley bought a phial of one of Schütz’s fraudulent liquids. The growth of the goitre seemed to stop. She bought more, then fell ill with a fever. And the goitre vanished, for reasons that – as Erasmus Schütz gloated – were beyond the comprehension of the city’s physicians. His triumph was temporary. A few months after Dinah Morley’s recovery, Schütz was obliged to flee the city, having been discovered in flagrante with the wife of one of his patients.

This might make a good story; even a book.

Imogen’s mother made mention of a woman who had lived in the village for five or six years, with her elderly sister, and who had only taken note of young Imogen, it appeared, on days when Imogen was on her bike or taking one of the dogs for an extended walk. On the basis of a few sightings, the lady had decided that this girl was a happy-go-lucky child, a description that she employed, without fail, every time she happened to encounter a member of Imogen’s family. It was as if her happy-go-luckiness were as incontrovertible as the colour of her eyes. ‘Every single time,’ said her mother, who now found it more amusing than she had used to, though she still did not know, said Imogen, quite how inapposite the label was. ‘Who we are has so little to do with us,’ said Imogen, as if quoting, and her mother considered the remark, and smiled, seeming to find in the observation some pertinence to herself.

Francesca has work to do: editing of the Domus Aurea book has to be finished before the end of the month. On her laptop, she has the images that will accompany the text. We look at the mighty brick pillars that are thought to have been supports for the coenatio rotunda, the circular dining hall, of which Suetonius wrote that its ceiling ‘would turn constantly day and night like the Heavens’. Archaeologists believe that it was in fact the floor that rotated, under a depiction of the night sky, and that the mechanism was powered by water. The book will include a diagram of how the revolving dining room might have functioned. Francesca shows me the diagram, and an animated film in which the viewer is taken on a flight over the lake and the vineyards of the Golden House, past the colossal statue of the emperor, before swooping into a courtyard, where our virtual tour of the interior begins.

Emma comes in. ‘Take a look at this,’ says Francesca, beckoning. The camera slows down, so that we can appreciate a spectacular painted wall – the frescoes of the Domus Aurea cover more than ten times the area of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, Francesca tells us. Pointing to the hole in the centre of the vault, she tells her mother about the boy who, one day in 1480 or thereabouts, fell into a hole in the Esquiline hill and found himself in what he took to be a painted cave, but which was in fact one of the three hundred rooms of Nero’s Golden House. Within a mere forty years of the emperor’s death the palace had been built over so thoroughly that no trace of it was visible above ground. After the discovery, holes were cut into the hill so that people could descend into the fabulous grotto. Raphael himself had explored the ruins. ‘Can you imagine what that must have been like?’ wonders Francesca. ‘Raphael dangling on a rope, peering into the murk.’ I marvel with her. But water pouring in through the holes has caused great damage, as have the roots of the trees that were planted on the hill when the site became a park. When it rains, the weight of the soil and vegetation on top of the Domus Aurea increases by as much as thirty per cent. ‘It’s a big problem,’ Francesca tells her mother. Emma takes her daughter’s word for it, but she is not convinced that all this work on the wreckage of Nero’s palace is the best use of however many millions of euros of public money are being lavished on the project. It might be better to just call it quits, she suggests. The old frescoes are pretty, but she’ll take the Sistine Chapel any day, she apologises. She leaves us to enjoy the pictures of ancient brickwork and rubble-strewn corridors. We hunch over the laptop; the incorrigible ruin-buffs.

It’s ridiculous how little Francesca is earning at the moment, Emma protests to me. It’s insulting. ‘She’d be better off working in one of our shops,’ she says. Francesca shouldn’t have to be working at Christmas. Nicholas has to do a few hours, of course, but that’s to be expected: his company depends on him; he’s well paid, as he should be. ‘It’s a waste of her intelligence,’ she tells me.

‘She enjoys what she does. Many people can’t say that,’ I answer.

‘She could enjoy what she does and get paid properly,’ Emma counters. The discussion follows its customary course, to resignation. ‘My daughter is an economic invalid, and it’s your fault,’ says Emma, administering a whack with a towel. The course of Francesca’s life, my sister pretends, was diverted into its present unlucrative channel by my influence. ‘All those afternoons with you in the British Museum,’ she says. ‘You and Mr Martin,’ she curses, clamping her teeth on the name of the teacher who had escorted young Francesca around Pompeii, turning the girl’s head, while her classmates improved their tans.

Emma and Nicholas at work in the kitchen all morning, preparing the two Christmas feasts: one for the meat-eating seniors, and one for Francesca and her husband and their child. Every now and then, Emma tells me, her daughter makes some sort of attempt to convert her to the cause of virtuous eating, but not with the zeal of earlier years. The turkey is no longer lamented as the ‘murdered bird’. Today is a domestic carnival; all tribulations are set aside. Emma will make no mention of the current state of the retail environment, nor will her husband refer to the impact of recent political developments on his company’s business; Francesca’s dwindling income will not be a topic; likewise the closure of the museum. We are fortunate people. The food is sumptuous, and the wine is special – and, I am sure, unconscionably expensive.

We withdraw to the living room. A corner has been set aside as Jack’s play area; assisted by his father, he assembles a wooden train track. Emma’s gift from Francesca is a set of nature documentaries, her favourite genre. When she needs to unwind, she gives herself up to the spectacle of the natural world. In keeping with the season, she selects a winter-themed programme. We follow an Arctic fox on the hunt, then a polar bear. The camerawork is remarkable, as is the definition of the new TV set. Crystals of snow glint like diamonds on the fox’s whiskers. After fifteen minutes we’re off to the Southern Hemisphere, to observe a flotilla of penguins endeavouring to ride ashore on the waves. Geraint brings Jack over to watch the comical birds as they skid on the ice; they waddle through blizzards in their thousands. When things take a violent turn – seals ambushed by killer whales – Jack is carried back to his trains. The black water, the luminous ice, the spray of blood – the colours are sumptuous. State of the art, as the blurb on the box proclaims. Back in the Arctic, a polar bear waits at a breathing hole. It has been waiting for hours; sooner or later, a seal will put its head up. The tension is high. Emma, anxious for the seals, takes her husband’s hand; they have been married for more than thirty years, and still they hold hands. Contentment and prosperity; there is a vein of envy in my affection.

When the programme is over, Emma takes Jack in her lap to read to him. With one hand she turns the pages, and with the other she holds her grandson; her fingers are spread on his chest, and he places his hands over them, as if to secure their protection. ‘Giraffe,’ says my sister, and Jack tilts forward to touch the page. ‘That’s right,’ says Emma; she kisses the top of his head. ‘Gorilla,’ she says, and again Jack puts a finger on the book. ‘Very good,’ she says, and she angles her head so that he can see her smile of praise, which becomes a gaze of adoration, which is returned. At risk of embarrassing myself, I withdraw to the kitchen. Pans have to be scoured.

Geraint has brought a sample of the material with which he’s working: a tangerine-coloured square of sponge, a quarter of an inch thick. Inserted into clothing, it will protect people whose occupations entail a risk of severe impacts – oil rigs, demolition, motorbike racing. Non-Newtonian fluids are the key to the technology, he tells us. On Francesca’s laptop we watch a video of students messing around in a pool of cornstarch and water. Two of them run across the surface of the mixture again and again. Their footprints vanish within seconds. Then one of them stops running, halfway across, whereupon he slowly sinks. It’s the same principle, Geraint explains. Emma inspects the fabric, turning it over three or four times, as if checking a magician’s prop; she crushes the square in her palms. ‘Sweetheart, if you’d be so good,’ says Geraint, and Francesca passes the mallet to him, then places her hand on the table, forming a fist. He lays the square over the back of her hand. ‘Ready?’ he says, and at Francesca’s nod he brings the mallet down. It bounces off, as if it had struck wood. ‘Nothing,’ Francesca assures us. The demonstration is repeated. ‘Can I have a go?’ asks Emma. She invites me to place my fist on the table. She puts some effort into her second blow, like a medieval agent of the law maiming the hand of a thief.

Scenes from Devotion have been put online. Beatrice’s therapeutic orgasm, of course. Would be a lot better if she wuz nekkid, someone has remarked. In those days did people do sex with all there clothes on? someone else enquires. The death of Beatrice has also been excerpted. Whats wrong with that fucken baby??? Looks like a squid or something. The most frequently viewed scene, and the one that has attracted most comments, is the discovery of Beatrice’s body, many years after her death. The corpse has the appearance of Beatrice alive, asleep. The flesh is pallid but pliant, as if death had occurred that very hour. The doctor draws the scalpel across the skin of the forearm, releasing a flow of clear and oily liquid, like glycerin – the embalming fluid concocted by Julius Preston, a compound of unknown composition. Some are not wholly impressed by the fakery:

Further comments:

Should the opportunity arise, I shall bid for a print: the picture of Sequah, the Native American medicine man, pulling teeth by lantern light, on a stage in Chester, in 1890. Purveyor of such ‘world renowned remedies’ as Sequah’s Oil and Sequah’s Prairie Flower (‘a boon to suffering females’), Sequah was so successful that there were as many as twenty-three Sequahs on the road at any one time. On the night of the Chester tooth-pulling, Sequah was simultaneously bringing succour to the people of Manchester, Norwich and Cork. The original Sequah, founder of the brand, was born in Yorkshire, c.1857; real name – William Henry Hartley.

At the end of Brock Street a sudden noise – a roaring rush of air – made me look up, and there was a huge white balloon, low enough for me to read the faces that were gazing down. It was overtaking me, drifting over the park. Everyone on the grass looked up; and ahead of me, at the railings, I saw the carmine coat and silver hair, and Bianca, also looking up. My approach was noticed and acknowledged with a raised hand; the woman turned her attention back to the balloon, which was rising with another blast from the burner. ‘Have you ever been in one of those things?’ she asked, still watching. ‘I went up in one once,’ she went on. ‘Years ago. In Mexico. The City of the Gods. Terrifying experience. Never again. How are you?’ Now she looked at me. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ It was a very lovely day, I agreed. Bianca had raised a paw. ‘She really does seem to like you,’ her owner remarked. ‘I’m flattered,’ I said. And I remembered Francesca, after a boyfriend had let her down, taking consolation from the fidelity of the family dog. Then I heard myself repeat the line that Francesca, in self-parody, had quoted: Mentiri non didicere ferae. ‘Animals have not learned to lie,’ I translated, regretting that I had not kept quiet. But the woman looked at me as though I had said something profound, and intriguing. ‘On the whole,’ she agreed. ‘Though this one isn’t entirely straightforward,’ she added, directing a quizzical gaze into the eyes of her pet.

It was time for me to get back to work, I told her, not making it obvious, I hoped, that I was inclined to remain.

‘The museum is closing, I hear,’ she said.

I explained the situation.

‘Such a pity. As if we need another hotel.’ She would visit the museum again before it closed, she assured me. Then she said: ‘Alexandra.’ We shook hands.

Reading, I look across the room to the chair in which Imogen used to read. I can picture her, turned to the side, with her legs curled up and a book propped on the arm of the chair, angled into the light of the lamp. I would sit here and she there, on opposite sides of the room, each in a small zone of illumination, and the rest of the room in shadow. The pleasure of reading together – of being solitary together. It was like acting, in a way, she said: we become someone else when we read, and each book changes us, for a while, even if only for as long as we are reading it.

To describe Imogen, I could write: five feet eight inches tall; of slender build. Hair: dark and heavy, straight, usually shoulder-length. The eyes, essential to any description of the beloved, were also dark – brown, with a russet tinge. The fine arch of the eyebrows would have to be mentioned. The hands: delicate and long-fingered. I could write about the regularity of her features, the ‘openness’ of her face. Still she cannot be seen. This character named Imogen speaks words that Imogen spoke, but Imogen’s voice cannot be heard. ‘Imogen pauses; she looks down at her hands, arrested in the act of forming an awkward chord; frowning, she leans forward to scrutinise the notes on the page; she bites her lip; the candlelight glows on her throat.’ An ideal Imogen, in the perpetual present of the sentence, where nobody is alive and nobody dead.